LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 271 



presently gives us two from Ralph Roister Doister, each con 

 taining the phrase Saint George to borrow ! That borrow 

 means take no owner of books need be told, and Mr. Hazlitt has 

 shown great skill in borrowing other people s illustrations for 

 his notes, but the phrase he quotes has no such meaning as he 

 gives it. Mr. Dyce in a note on Skelton explains it rightly, St. 

 George being my pledge or surety. 



We gather a few more of these flowers of exposition and 

 etymology : 



The while thou sittest in chirche, thi bedys schalt thou bidde. (Vol. I. p. 181.) 



i.e. thou shalt offer thy prayers. Mr. Hazlitt s note on bidde 

 is, *i. e. bead. So in the Kyng and the Hermit, line 1 1 1 : 



That herd an hermyte there within 

 Unto the gate he gan to wyn 

 Bedying his prayer. 



Precisely what Mr. Hazlitt understands by beading (or indeed by 

 anything else) we shall not presume to divine, but we should like 

 to hear him translate if any man bidde the worshyp, which 

 comes a few lines further on. Now let us turn to page 191 of 

 the same volume. Maydenys ben loneliche and no thing sekir. 

 Mr. Hazlitt tells us in a note that sekir or sicker is a very 

 common form of secure, and quotes in illustration from the prose 

 Morte Arthure, l A ! said Sir Launcelot, comfort yourselfe, for it 

 shall bee unto us as a great honour, and much more then if we 

 died in any other places : for of death wee be sicker? Now in 

 the text the word means safe, and in the note it means sure. 

 Indeed sure, which is only a shorter form of secure, is its ordi 

 nary meaning. I mak sicker, said Kirkpatrick, a not unfitting 

 motto for certain editors, if they explained it in their usual 

 phonetic way. 



In the Frere and the Boye, when the old man has given the 

 boy a bow, he says : 



Shote therein, whan thou good thynke ; 

 For yf thou shote and wynke, 

 The prycke thow shake hytte. 



Mr. Hazlitt s explanation of wynke is to close one eye in taking 

 aim, and he quotes a passage from Gascoigne in support of it. 

 Whatever Gascoigne meant by the word (which is very doubtful), 

 it means nothing of the kind here, and is another proof that Mr. 

 Hazlitt does not think it so important to understand what he 

 reads as St. Philip did. What the old man said was, l even if 

 you shut both your eyes, you can t help hitting the mark. So 

 in Piers Ploughman ( Whitaker s text), 



Wynkyng, as it were, wytterly ich saw hyt. 



